Chris Bohjalian - Secrets of Eden

“We all know there isn’t a killer on the loose who’s preying on people he doesn’t know,” I said. “Whoever killed the Haywards knew them and had a clear motive. Sondra must know that, too. She’s grandstanding. After all, it is an election year for her.”

“Sondra doesn’t grandstand. You know that.”

“She does great work. She’s a great person. But I don’t think she has to worry about the safety of her constituents. Whoever killed the Haywards isn’t about to strike somewhere in downtown Bennington.”

“You’re not worried about the reverend?”

“I think he had a concrete motive.”

“You snap once, it’s much easier to snap a second time.”

“I really don’t believe anyone needs to add extra locks to their doors.”

“That’s not the point. I’ve also heard from both county senators. I’ve heard from our mayor. And I seem to be hearing from the media far more often than I would like.”

“Is that the point, Jim? Is that what this is about? People are frustrated? You’re frustrated? You’re spending more time than you want to holding people’s hands on the telephone?” Immediately I knew I had sounded more exasperated than I should have. He stood a little more erect, and his eyes narrowed.

“Alice Hayward was a battered wife who was murdered. Strangled. Someone wrapped his hands around her throat and crushed her larynx, broke the bones in her neck, compressed the carotid arteries, and caused her to asphyxiate. And that someone was almost certainly her husband. Almost certainly. But it also might not have been her husband, because another person-and it sure as hell wasn’t Alice-took his gun and discharged the weapon into the right side of his skull, splintering bone, causing brain trauma, hemorrhaging, and a serious mess on the family’s living-room windows, walls, and couch. That is the point.”

“I’m sorry,” I said.

“Sometime this week or next, when we can clear everyone’s calendars, I’d like us to sit down with the folks at Criminal Investigation and see exactly what we have and what avenues we haven’t pursued.”

“I have a gut feeling you’d like me to be there.”

“Go with your gut,” he said, and then he turned on his heel and left.

PERHAPS A DOZEN times in my life, I’ve run into people while we’re investigating them. Bennington County is like that: It’s a deceptively small corner of Vermont. I’ve run into suspects and perps out on bail while squeezing chickens at the supermarket, while getting gas at the convenience store (with Marcus in his car seat in the back), and at the annual colonial fair over Father’s Day weekend in June (with, thank you very much, my whole family present). Of those dozen or so encounters, all but once the individual knew exactly who I was. And of those times when it was clear that the suspect and I knew precisely where we stood with each other, only twice have I felt the hairs rise up along the back of my neck. One time was when I was having new brake pads put on my car and the wagon tuned up for winter. One of the mechanics, I realized, was an angry young guy charged with aggravated assault and felony unlawful mischief: He had walked into a downtown bar with a steel pipe in his hands and beaten the crap out of some poor dude who’d smiled at his girlfriend. He ended up breaking the guy’s arm. Then, on his way out, he smashed the bar’s plate-glass window for good measure. With his grandparents’ help, he had managed to post 10 percent of the twenty-five-thousand-dollar bail. (It never ceases to amaze me how many people are out on bail and shouldn’t be. Presume this guy was innocent? Yeah, right. I could have filled a dinner party with witnesses. I was also convinced that he was the person who’d been burglarizing vehicles for weeks in a city parking lot and robbed an older couple one night as they unlocked their minivan using-surprise!-a steel pipe as a weapon. And yes, later we would charge him with those crimes, too.) We saw each other at the car dealer just after I’d arrived at the service counter, while I was waiting for them to sign me out a loaner for the day, and our eyes met. He looked seriously pissed at me: His bangs were plastered to his forehead, and he glowered like a petulant schoolboy. Then he motioned with his head out toward my car, which was in the lot just outside the service-garage window.

“That yours?” he asked.

“It is.”

He studied it for a moment as if he were checking out a girl in a bar and then wrinkled his nose dismissively as if it didn’t measure up in some way. Finally he turned back to me and smirked. “We’re gonna get some ice tonight, I hear,” he said. “A lotta ice.” Then he disappeared back into the shop. That night, after I had picked up the car, I was sure my brakes weren’t going to work when I needed them most. For almost a week, I found myself braking long before I normally would have-just in case.

The other suspect who unnerved me when I ran into him outside the safe confines of court was none other than the Reverend Stephen Drew. I knew he was living in Bennington, and I knew he was renting an apartment not far from the courthouse. Nevertheless, it took me a moment to put a name to his face when I came across him on the sidewalk about fifty yards from the courthouse entrance. It was almost six o’clock in the evening, and there was a chill wind blowing in from the west. There were still another two weeks of daylight saving time, but it was overcast, damp, and dusky outside-and there was almost no one on the street. I was racing to the bookstore, which I knew was about to close, because I wanted to pick up a couple of picture books for a pal of Lionel’s who was having a birthday party that coming Saturday. And there the minister was. He was leaning against the brick side of a recessed doorway, and he had the collar turned up on a gray jacket that fell to midthigh. He pushed himself off the wall and blocked my path.

“You’re Catherine Benincasa,” he said. “We met the last Monday in July. I’d recognize you anywhere.” It is always a tad alarming when a suspect in a murder investigation calls you by name on a deserted street at twilight, and his tone was somewhere between menacing and weary. The nearest people were either the security guards back inside the double doors at the metal detectors of the courthouse or the patrons at a bar shut tight against the cold nearly a block away.

“I am,” I said warily. “Hello, Reverend Drew.”

“Stephen. Please. I was just about to give up.”

For a split second, I misconstrued what he’d said, misinterpreting “give up” for “give myself up,” and I thought he wanted to turn himself in. But his demeanor was too chilly, too confrontational for that. I realized then what he had actually meant. “You’ve been waiting for me?”

He nodded. It was just cold enough that I could see his breath. “I waited yesterday, too, but I never saw you leave the building.”

I had to restrain myself from saying something catty about how I’d never before met a pastor who was also a stalker, because I honestly didn’t know yet whether I was in danger. Instead I said simply, “I wasn’t in court yesterday afternoon.”

“Ah.”

“You know I can’t talk to you.”

“Why?”

“And your lawyer would be furious if he knew you were trying to talk to me.”

“My lawyer does not tell me what to do. I think we should chat.”

“I’m sorry,” I told him. “I am not going to speak to you without your lawyer present.”

“But you will if Aaron joins us?”

“Aaron Lamb won’t let you talk to me. I promise.”

His hands were burrowed deep inside his jacket pockets, and when he removed them suddenly, I must have flinched. He shook his head and said, smiling, “You really believe I killed both of them, don’t you?”